Abstract
In 1998, the New York City Department of Health and the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management began monitoring the volume of ambulance dispatch calls as a surveillance tool for biologic terrorism. We adapted statistical techniques designed to measure excess influenza mortality and applied them to outbreak detection using ambulance dispatch data. Since 1999, we have been performing serial daily regressions to determine the alarm threshold for the current day. In this article, we evaluate this approach by simulating a series of 2,200 daily regressions. In the influenza detection implementation of this model, there were 71 (3.2%) alarms at the 99% level. Of these alarms, 64 (90%) occurred shortly before or during a period of peak influenza in each of six influenza seasons. In the bioterrorism detection implementation of this methodology, after accounting for current influenza activity, there were 24 (1.1%) alarms at the 99% level. Two occurred during a large snowstorm, 1 is unexplained, and 21 occurred shortly before or during a period of peak influenza activity in each of six influenza seasons. Our findings suggest that this surveillance system is sensitive to communitywide respiratory outbreaks with relatively few false alarms. More work needs to be done to evaluate the sensitivity of this approach for detecting nonrespiratory illness and more localized outbreaks.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Rotz LD, Khan AS, Lillebridge SR, Ostroff SM, Hughes JM. Public health assessment of potential biological terrorism agentsEmerg Infect Dis. 2002;8:225–230.
Serfling RE. Methods for current statistical analysis of excess pneumonia-influenza deaths.Public Health Rep. 1963;78:494–506.
Lui KJ, Kendal AP. Impact of influenza epidemics on mortality in the United States from October 1972 to May 1985.Am J Public Health. 1987;77:712–716.
Simonsen L, Clarke MJ, Williamson GD, Stroup DF, Arden NH, Schonberger LB. The impact of influenza epidemics on mortality: introducing a severity index.Am J Public Health. 1997;87:1944–1950.
Stoto MA. Statistical issues in syndromic surveillance systems. Paper presented at: American Public Health Association Meeting; 2002. Abstract 52866.
Thompson WW, Shay DK, Weintraub E, et al. Mortality associated with influenza and respiratory syncytial virus in the United States.JAMA. 2003;289:179–186.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mostashari, F., Fine, A., Das, D. et al. Use of ambulance dispatch data as an early warning system for communitywide influenzalike illness, New York City. J Urban Health 80 (Suppl 1), i43–i49 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00022314
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00022314